See ya round, beardy!

Farewell Atsumori. You were one of the few well meaning moderates in an increasingly radical clan and had the misfortune of paying for it.

http://rhr.thecomicseries.com Bree

Oh god, please don’t tell me that’s Atsumori’s child.

I’m not sure I could deal with the feels.

Hfar

I believe that’s a young Yorikiro he’s looking over.

Turul

I thought it was little Eijiro, back when he was cuter and brought fewer assassinations to Atsumori.

Hfar

Yeah, you’re probably right. It’d fit more with the recent turn of events.

IDPounder

Somehow, seeing the joy and happiness in Stick Atsumori and Stick Eijiro only makes the betrayal more sad. Farewell you magnificent, bearded bastard.

Xinef

This needs more baby Nataku.

EBeth

Let’s face it, he was probably the kind of kid who pulled wings off of flies and legs off of grasshoppers & used lenses to focus sun on ants & cook them.

Xinef

Or the kind of kid who was given real weapons as toys. I’ve heard that was common practice in some ancient cultures, where 3 year old kids were already learning to shoot bows and such.

clogboy

I will pass that custom on to my children. There’s nothing like martial arts to train body and mind, and sharpen the senses.
Now where in my hometown can I find a respectable dojo…

Xinef

Heh… when I buy myself a house (or inherit one or whatever) I’d love to dedicate one room as a dojo. It’s just hard to train kenjitsu and especially naginatajitsu and kyujitsu in a living room with furniture and stuff :c

Jake

“more is less and less is more. lust for material things is common. greed hinders the mind and body.”

Turul

“and especially hinders the naginata.”

clogboy

I went to one Kenjitsu dojo in the Netherlands, and because they considered it a no-contact sport I was told from day one that I was being too agressive, whenever I put some heart into it. Just waiving sticks around achieves nothing.

Xinef

It depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to learn self defense, or how to kill someone with a sharpened metal bar, or generally swordfighting, then yes, contact martial arts are better for you. As far as I know, kendo is the most contact oriented, while kenjitsu, iaido/iaijitsu are more kata oriented. Though I think some kenjitsu dojos do have contact training too.

The thing is, kata are more akin to meditation than to real swordfighting – their purpose is not to teach you how to fight, but how to think and how to control your body. They’re supposed to affect your entire life, not just situations when someone tries to kill you. Yes, contact martial arts will teach you better how to act when some ruffian attacks you with a knife in a dark alley, but performing kata will teach you how to keep your cool, when your boss is shouting at you, or when your every move is being judged – i.e. the other kinds of stressful situations.

And then you use kiai to just kill your boss by shouting back at him.

Flaming Squirrel

I demand baby everyone. That includes baby Alex, baby JW… and even baby Xinef.

Is that weird? I feel like that might be weird.

Xinef

There’s plenty of baby squirrels on the internet, but I can’t find any baby flaming squirrels :c
(therefore they don’t exist).